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Sunday, 26 February 2017

I've decided I will make a technique journal this year and have started with the water colour powders.

Experimenting a bit further with the water colour powders I began with the brown bister sprinkled over the water colour paper and then spritzed an old stamp with water and pressed it onto it, repeating lots of times until I had it fully covered the paper.

I then stamped an old Tim stamp with ground espresso distress ink over the top.

Taking a fine brush, some water on my craft mat and chipped sapphire and stormy sky distress inks I began painting in some of the designs and finger splattered some blue onto the background. I love the browns and blues merging together in some areas.

I repeated the process with antique linen and tea dye.

As this is a journal I thought I would keep it simple and add one of Tim's small quotes.

And hey presto the first page is done.

I can see me using this technique for my Packhouse cards. It will be interesting to watch what designs will sell. At the moment I am gathering up Mother's Day style bits and pieces and making some shabby cards to do a changeover tomorrow - just trying to keep to the themes of the year. I had forgotten how much I love shabby card making - I can see some appearing on here soon.

Friday, 24 February 2017

I am sharing some cards I needed to make because I now have a small shop space to sell my art and crafts projects - be it canvas, shadowbox, canvas boards, tags or cards - I have some on display and I was very lucky to sell my first piece within 30 hours of 'opening'.

I have this wall space in the PackHouse, a 400 year old building nestled into the Surrey countryside in the village of Runfold near Farnham. It was once a hop house as this was at one time a huge hop growing area and although that doesn't exist anymore we do have the Hogs Back Brewery which still keeps up the local tradition of local beers. The Packhouse now is a place to buy antiques and items for the home, all being of a vintage shabby style, so my work seems to fit quite nicely.

Monday, 20 February 2017

Sharing another background and card using the powder water colours, I have bistre's, brushos and infusions in my collection. I love the very mottled and watery effects you can achieve using them with a stencil. If you missed #'s 1 and 2, click on the numbers to be transported over to take a peek.

The background was created by lightly shaking watercolor powders over a stencil (make sure you have a piece of card underneath to create a second background) spritz the stencil with water. (The depth of colour will depend on how much powder you sprinkled on and the watery effect will depend on how much you spritz onto the stencil - play and experiment to see what effects you can make). Take your background piece of card and flip the stencil over onto it, rub over gently with a paper towel and remove the stencil to reveal the first layer. Heat dry.

Dry the stencil, place it back over the the background pattern. Blend distress inks through the arrows, I used pumice stone, stormy sky, and gathered twigs. Remove the stencil, spritz the card with water and heat dry. Press under something heavy to flatten it.

Collect together some items to build up the focus for the card. The cogs had been made before and thee corner had been rusted and not used on a previous project so I like to hold onto these bits and get them out when needed and not waste them.

I do however also have a 'rusting' session sometimes. Bits from Andy Skinner packs, chipboard pieces and die-cuts. Again I keep bits like the hexagons that are the 'waste' from a die, these look great as bolts.

These were given a rough and random coat of paynes grey, then some stipple burnt umber, a third stippling of cerulean blue, phthalo turquoise, burnt umber and a little tinting base (mixed, blended and changed every time I picked some up from the palette) then a coat of quinacridone gold finished with a wash of quin gold and phthalo turquoise mixed together.

I took this photo just to show how I adhere metal pieces that have a recessed back like this corner. Just fill it with modelling paste which acts as a glue.

Friday, 17 February 2017

I'm here to share my second project for the Country View Crafts 'Under 30 minutes' time challenge with a masculine card for this one. Again I dipped into discarded supplies from other projects but when you want to make something quickly that's what you need - I keep so many bits and pieces for just that purpose.

I started with a gelli print to become my background, I think it had one pull from the gelli plate and then some brayering over the top from making other prints at the same time.

So how to add the focal elements and more interest to the card? I got out a stencil and the stamp I wanted to use ........

..... and some bits of ephemera and die-cuts ......

...... and then ready to write my recipe like last time.

1. Take a stencil and add shapes to the gelli print background.

2. Use a stamp to add random printing to create more depth.

3. Stamp the focal image on media paper and use distress inks to water colour it - cut the shape of it out and edge with ground espresso.

4. Cut the background to size, round the corners and ink the edges then mount it onto some blue or brown card, rounding the corners again.

5. Create a collage with the focal image, ephemera and border pieces.

6. Add the star and words and hey presto you are done.

Hope you are enjoying the challenge and I hope you can join in. I really need to take this method of card making on board to get something done in less time than I imagined I could.

Have a wonderful weekend. I am off to the Stitches Trade Show in Birmingham on Sunday for a couple of days so that will be fun looking at new products and getting to see lots of crafty friends.

Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Cut some patterned paper the size of the back of the frame and using a stencil and modeling paste create a textured pattern.

Scrape through some white gesso, heat dry and then random stamp with permanent ink. I used vermillion with black over the top to get a two tone effect.

Take a greyboard square and scrape some gesso lightly over the top to create a little texture.

When the gesso is dry paint it with a coat of cadmium red and quinacridone magenta, dry it and give a coat of transparent red iron oxide mixed with raw umber and before it dries flick some water over the surface let it stand for half a minute or so and then gently roll over some kitchen towel to remove the water and some of the paint underneath it. This technique gives you that mottled effect.

Take a small wooden heart (did Elvis pop into your head then? It did mine lol). Daub a little white gesso onto it, turn it over and press the gessoed side onto your craft mat (or something similar). This gives you a very quick way to create a different texture.

Daub a little paynes grey over the heart, dab most of it off and then repeat in a couple of random areas so you get contrasting depths of the colour.

I painted on the reds and raw umber dabbing off with kitchen roll to continue the mixed colour effects ....

..... and dry-brushed white gesso over it to reveal the texture again.

I then swiped over the vermillion red ink pad to bring the reds to life more.

Again I added some white dry-brushing but this time nearer to the edges.

I painted the edge of the heart with white gesso and sanded it back when it was dry, finishing with blended ground espresso distress ink.

To finish the square I sanded over it and around the edges and blended that with the distress ink too.

I took a cheap craft metal frame painted it with a mix of the reds and raw umber paints, let it dry and then blended over some iced espresso metallic lustre.

All I needed to do to complete the shadowbox was to make my own sentient for the metal frame .....

.... and put it together.

No embellishments, no collage just a simple design with lots of technique.

I dipped the white frame into a few watery washes of the colours I had been using but was not happy with the overall finished result ...

.... so that's when it got sanded and grunged up a bit with the sanding block and ground espresso distress ink.

That's better!

Now I'm happier with it.

Enjoy your Valentine's day with special people in your life and listen to your own HeArt.

About Me

Bumblebees and Butterflies is where I keep a complete log of my creative journey. Here you will see my shabby-vintage style, the projects I make and hopefully find some inspiration. I love to share new ideas and new learning so my posts are peppered with step-by-steps and tutorials. I hope you stay a while and join me on this incredible adventure and follow my progress as I travel this exciting path. Thank you for being here and please contact me if you have any questions. If you would like to take a class with me, check out my teaching schedule and maybe I will see you there.

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Hi and welcome to my blog. This is a place to see what I have been creating and making, and if anything inspires you please use my designs to help create your own. I just ask that you do not copy mine and pass them off as yours. Enjoy.